VidCon: YouTube launches VR180 video format, cheap VR cameras in tow

So, what happens when you run an article about how BlackBerry users are too embarrassed to be seen in public with their phones, for fear of "shame and public humiliation"? You receive a calmly worded letter from the company's CEO. Yes, Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins personally replied to the New York Times' "BlackBerry as black sheep" article which included interviews with BlackBerry owners talking about how they hide their devices under their iPads and have to use their partners' Android and Apple phones to access popular apps like Yelp and OpenTable. In his letter to the editor,...

The mood at Nokia's Finnish headquarters must be pretty bleak today. The once-dominant mobile giant has announced its third quarter financial results and to say that things are looking bad would be an understatement on par with calling Hiroshima quite a big explosion. The company reported a US$754-million net loss on US$9.49-billion in net sales. The situation is particularly dire in its smartphone division. Despite its best efforts with the Lumia range of devices (which we love) smartphone sales are down 63% year on year. The company only managed to shift 6.3-million smartphones this quarter, versus 16.8-million units in...

Surprisingly little has been said about Facebook’s foray into social banking. In July this year, Citigroup asked its Facebook fans whether they would ever bank on a social networking site and the question raised more than 300 comments, most of which weren’t positive. Despite the sentiment, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has already gone ahead and provided its social media savvy users with an app that allows them to view their balances and, critically, make payments. For many (including this writer), the thought of having one’s banking at the mercy of a social network sends shivers down their proverbial spines. Facebook,...

Content marketing has taken off as brands move away from traditional advertising in order to embrace a more social, engaging way to connect with consumers in order to nurture brand loyalty and awareness. Content marketing is based on the idea of creating, curating and most importantly, publishing and sharing original content. In today’s information obsessed online communities this branch of digital marketing is rapidly growing as people increasingly realise the power of branded content. Despite its success, the idea behind creating a content-focused strategy is still relatively new. According to a recent study conducted by Outbrain and Econsultancy, a...

Now, I have interviewed a couple of folks for the ‘Burn already and I have to be honest, I was a lot more familiar with their work than I am with today’s interviewee. I’ve read about Franco’s kernels, heck, I’ve even tried them on my Nexus S, and earlier on my Galaxy Nexus, and they’ve always been good, but there has always been something stopping me from using them full-time. Don’t let my lack of adventurous spirit fool you though, Francisco Franco knows the drill, and his kernel is excellent. Read more on Gearburn. var vglnk={key:"cc324b6567a9637aa0ff15bc9564b2a5"};!function(e,a){var t=e.createElement(a);t.type="text/javascript",t.async=!0,t.src="//cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js";var n=e.getElementsByTagName(a);n.parentNode.insertBefore(t,n)}(document,"script");

Back in January Twitter announced that it would be blocking tweets on a country-by-country basis. Now the policy has been implemented for the first time against a German hate group. The action was first spotted Financial Times, following the submission of a report by Twitter to Chilling Effects. The report reveals that the German Ministry of the Interior for Lower-Saxony had banned the “Besseres Hannover” (Better Hanover) organisation, which is apparently Neo Nazi in nature. Such organisations are illegal under German law. The ministry went so far as to request that the account be seized and that no future accounts...

The Bookmarks, a digital award showcase which aims to recognise excellence in digital, has announced the finalists for this year's awards. The awards are an initiative of the Digital Media Marketing Association (DMMA). The shortlisted entries were selected by a panel of judges that includes top industry players. According to the Bookmarks committee, this year saw a record-breaking number of entries. "This year has truly reflected the immense popularity and competitive spirit within the digital realm of the industry. The increase in the number of entries is testament to the success and credibility of the Bookmarks Awards and I am...

Data centres aren't usually synonymous with beauty. But, of course Google would have the most stunning server rooms in the world.... that no one besides a handful of employees can see. But thanks to Google's new website 'Where the internet lives', you can take a virtual creep around its data centres from Finland to the US without infringing on other users' privacy. The interactive gallery is stocked with amazing photographs by Connie Zhou which are annotated with captions and clickable hotspots which give you more detail about what you're seeing. You can also head over to Street View...

When the Pirate Bay announced that it would be sailing its servers across the seven skies, we called its founders out for trolling the world. More believable is news that it is heading into the cloud, the legitimate one, used by serious businesses around the world. According to Torrent Freak, the online sharing site has moved all of its operations into the cloud. For the most part, it's doing so for the same reasons as any company would: costs will be cut and the site will have better up time. More importantly however, it makes the group virtually invulnerable to...

If you're of the opinion that Big Data is still some nebulous thing that you'll need to think about some day, you'd best wake up kiddo. It's here now and it's big business. The business of Big Data is essentially about mining the petabytes and exabytes of data we now deal with on a daily basis, using increasingly complex algorithms to make it useful. And according to tech research company Gartner, that business is set to be worth US$28-billion this year, growing to US$34-billion in 2013. Gartner says that a large portion of the money going into Big Data...

When it comes to accessing the internet, mobile has a lot of advantages over traditional desktop PCs, particularly in emerging markets. Top of that list is the fact that it's cheaper. It should hardly be surprising then that mobile is now the number one means of accessing the web in China. According to an abstract of a report published by the China Internet Network Information Center: “Mobile phone has become No. 1 internet access terminal in China.... In the first half of 2012, the number of internet users using mobile phones to access the internet reached 388 million while that...

The mobile wallet has been touted as the next big thing for a number of years, so you would expect that by now the App-For-That maxim would ring true for everyone with a smartphone. Oddly enough while mobile payment services still seem to be positively fetal when it comes to real world application, industry gurus swear that mobile wallet use is significantly on the rise. Back in 2009, Gartner Group predicted that the number of mobile payment users around the world would be topping 190-million by 2012. This year, Gartner revised that number to 212.2 million users, with a...